Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Wednesday Outrageous Watch

For today's Wednesday Outrageous Watch, I wanted to highlight an apparently new twist to official public events for the president. The Obama administration has taken to commissioning and pre-approving prayers for rallies and other public events. This is unprecidented in modern political history.

When the president went to Elkhart, Indiana for a nationally televised town hall meeting earlier this month, administration officials asked conservative Republican Ryan Culp ahead of time to compose the prayer and call "an aide from the White House Office of Public Liaison to recite it for vetting" according to US News and World Report. This is a departure from the practice of previous administrations.

For a party often wary of too much mixing of church and state, the Democratic administration seems all too eager to be seen as a party of prayer--as long as it meets with their approval beforehand.

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"Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of medieval Europe, that prohibition was effectively a rule of universal abolition. "— Rodney Stark